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‘Get better soon!’
A common response when someone announces they’re sick. We’ve said it and heard it a thousand times and it’s meant well. But this time, when I heard the words, they jarred. I wasn’t sure why. I wondered about this.
THE WELLNESS IMPERATIVE
I think there’s a fundamental belief that being ill is not ok. If we’re ill, it’s because there’s something wrong, we’re broken. In a world which worships health and wellness, to be ill is to fall short of the insistent narrative that says health is the state we must constantly strive for and be in, and if we are not, it’s imperative that we must get there whatever it takes. Of course we must correct our ailing state!
Have you noticed how many courses, podcasts, programs offer solutions to fix our physical, hormonal, digestive, neural, sleep, energy and sexual health issues? Never mind a whole medical industry built around the idea it’s not ok to be sick. Yet despite the massive amount of supplements, medications, surgeries and educational programs available to help us not to be ill, the truth is, so many of us are still sick. Chronically. It seems to me there’s something that’s not working – and it’s not our bodies.
What if being ill could be seen as a meaningful dialogue between you and your body? That in fact it’s a sign of profound wellness and health that your body is able to express symptoms and in this way communicate with you? That being ill is actually a sign you are healthy?
Can we sit next to that idea and let it keep us company for a moment?
What if your symptoms are your body’s very individual, biological way of responding to what is happening in your life? Did you fight with your partner? Did a project go badly? Were you deeply angered or frightened by an event? Did someone overstep a boundary? Is everything just ‘too much’ and you’re feeling overwhelmed?
If we do not process and express emotionally and mentally what has happened, where do our feelings go? They must default to our bodies. For this reason, illness is never random. It is always meaningful and unravelling the meaning begins with a conversation: what is going on for you?
To begin such a reflection, is to approach your body’s biology holistically, attributing far more complexity and intelligence to it than the common model of the body as a faulty, unreliable and mechanical thing to be feared when it ‘goes wrong’, with parts that need tests, scans, diagnoses and fixing by specialists who understand our bodies better than we do.
FASTER IS BETTER?
There’s an urgency in dealing with illness: we must get better fast. Well of course we do – who wants to sit in the miserable discomfort of illness for longer than absolutely necessary?
Nevertheless, I still asked myself the question: why must I get better soon?
Because while I’m ill, I’m not productive. I can’t be – I can only pay attention to myself while I’m ill and recovering. How many of us struggle against being inactive, forced to rest when unwell? Again, behind that lies another deeply held belief: being unproductive is not ok.
In a world which worships productivity, we are letting people down while we’re unproductive. It seems our sense of worth is inextricably tied up with what we produce, what we do, our capacity to perform. Why else would that be one of first questions we ask new people we meet: what do you do not who are you?
Our beliefs live inside our language and our language reinforces our beliefs.
I begin to see how the phrase ‘get better soon’ has pressure built into it, a sense of unspoken urgency. It’s yet another goal to strive for, to reach, to win. The next time someone announces they are ill, what if we responded with: take the time you need to be well? Would it feel more open-ended and spacious to the sick person? A relief instead of yet another imperative?
It’s our response to illness that’s not working.
We rush to quick-fix, numb pain, cut out dysfunctional parts and avoid feeling, without troubling to understand the body’s message, to be attuned and hear it speak.
It says; I am here, I’m part of you, trust me, please pay attention, love what I am.
There’s another way to live inside this body in a way that isn’t combative, managerial, endlessly corrective. I want to be at peace with my body exactly as it expresses itself. It means learning its language.